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LINX failure slows UK net traffic

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The London Internet Exchange (LINX) suffered a major failure yesterday afternoon, leading to a significant slowdown of UK traffic.

The initial failure has been isolated to a network switch which then "cascaded", causing more problems, said spokesman Richard Yule.

Investigations are ongoing as to whether the glitch was in hardware or software, or a combination of both, he added.

LINX acts as a main peering point for UK ISPs, allowing them to exchange traffic directly, which is cheaper than sending it via transit carriers. The failure hit only one of its two peering platforms, which each use different hardware.

Neverthless, there was a significant impact on peering, and therefore speeds enjoyed by customers, as some ISPs cut their connection to LINX while engineers worked. The impact is visible in LINX's 24-hour status graph.

Yule said the failure was fixed this afternoon, and things should now return to normal. ®